No single advancement has been more disruptive to retail stores than the internet. Giants like Amazon have created endless archives for users to browse products, allowing consumers to do all their research before they even set foot in a physical shop. In real terms, the cutthroat retail industry has become even more merciless.

Rather than floundering, the most successful stores have identified the shifting needs of their customer base, and adapted accordingly. Few have made the transition from “brick and mortar” to “click and mortar” as effectively as Tom Lee.

A feature on the Vancouver shopping scene since launching its flagship store downtown in 1987, the company made the choice to sell its premises at 929 Granville in January and move to a new home at Granville and Georgia: a location with much higher footfall. Previously the site of two vintage movie theatres, the new store—which boasts a 14,000 square foot interior—has been designed from scratch with customer satisfaction as the driving factor.

“In our old space, the business was built around the building,” Graham Blank, vice president and director for Tom Lee Music Canada, told reporters at the new store’s media event this afternoon. “It [had] separated [departments], and there were a lot of unique things about it being a heritage building. When we got this space, we did the opposite—we designed the space around our business, and the shopping experience we wanted our customers to have.”

Carefully selecting its new location for its visual and acoustic attributes, the team in charge of the renovation have thoughtfully laid out each section of the building to marry their physical properties with the instruments they showcase.

“Each department was designed from a customer’s perspective,” Blank says. “There are separate departments, but the whole store flows seamlessly throughout. We have the same full-line selection of instruments as we had at our old location, but obviously laid out much more cleanly and with a more modern design. We have an acoustic guitar room, a space for music technology, a listening room, a live sound and DJ area, a print music area where we have 10,000 titles on display, a brass and woodwind section, and an acoustic piano showroom, which has the largest selection of acoustic and hybrid pianos in Canada.

“We spent a lot of time thinking about the sound,” he continues. “A lot of retail stores, frankly, don’t sound very good. We have about 250 hanging lanterns in our acoustic piano showroom, for example. Those are all acoustic lanterns that are designed to diffuse the sound. We wanted to take advantage of the height of those rooms, and the 26-foot ceilings throughout that didn’t sound too good when we moved in. We spent a lot of time and money making the piano area sound like a concert hall. In the acoustic room, it’s much more intimate, so people can really hear the instruments that they’re playing, and in our technology area it’s the same thing.”

Demonstrating the design of the new location, Tom Lee treated media to performances in each section of the store. Shaun Verreault of Wide Mouth Mason played bluesy slide guitar at the upstairs City Stage space—a 70-person venue designed to host concerts and workshops, Yamaha artist Don Alder christened the acoustic room with his virtuoso fingerstyle guitar, and concert pianist and Steinway performer Ian Parker showed how the Spirio model could record his keystrokes and play them back perfectly.

“Our big idea for this store was to create a space that both existing customers and new customers would want to come and explore making music,” Blank says. “You to go a lot of shops and there will be signs saying ‘Please don’t touch’, and ‘Please ask for assistance’. If we had those signs, they would read ‘Please touch’. We want people to come and have fun and enjoy the space, and, frankly, to be inspired.”

Tom Lee is at 728 Granville Street (above London Drugs), and opens to the public on June 2. Performances and workshops will be running on June 2 and 3 for the Grand Opening, including seminars on Ableton Live, concerts from Don Alder and Shaun Verreault, and DJ sets from Purify and Rennie Foster. Check this out for more info.